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The Academy of American Poets is the largest membership-based nonprofit organization fostering an appreciation for contemporary poetry and supporting American poets. For over three generations, the Academy has connected millions of people to great poetry through programs such as National Poetry Month, the largest literary celebration in the world; Poets.org, the Academy’s popular website; American Poets, a biannual literary journal; and an annual series of poetry readings and special events. Since its founding, the Academy has awarded more money to poets than any other organization.

occasions

A House Divided

Kyle Dargan

On a railroad car in your America,I made the acquaintance of a manwho sang a life-song with these lyrics:"Do whatever you can/ to avoidbecoming a roofing man."I think maybe you'd deem his tenorelitist, or you'd hear him as fallingoff working-class key. He sangnot from his heart but his pulsingimagination, where every roof issloped like a spire and Sequoia tall.Who would wish for themselves, another,such a treacherous climb? In your America,a clay-colored colt stomps, its hoovescursing the barn's chronic lean.In your America, blood pulseswithin the fields, slow-poaching a mill saw'sburied flesh. In my America, my fatherawakens again thankful that my faceis not the face returning his glarefrom above eleven o'clock newsmurder headlines. In his imagination,the odds are just as convincingthat I would be posted on a cornerpushing powder instead of poems—no reflection of him as a father nor meas a son. We were merely bornin a city where the rues beyond our doorswere the streets that shanghaied souls.To you, my America appearsdistant, if even real at all. While you arebarely visible to me. Yet we continuestealing glances at each otherfrom across the tattered hallwaysof this overgrown house we calla nation—every minutea new wall erected, a bedroom addedbeneath its leaking canopy of dreams.We hear the dripping, we feel draftswrap cold fingers about our necks,but neither you or I trust each otherto hold the ladder or to ascend.

About this poem:"I took Amtrak from Washington, D.C. to Atlanta for my brother's wedding. I'd never travelled that far south by train. I saw a familiar but antiquated ruralness—another iteration of America. On the return, I grabbed a seat next to a group of Alabamians on their way to Jon Stewart's Rally to Restore Sanity. It seemed that, in the moment, there were so many different “Americas” colliding in the coach. While conversing about work over a dining car breakfast, one of the men, Mike Laus, offered a line about roofing someone had passed on to him. It struck me, and provided an entry point for musing on how little we see of, or believe in, each other's Americas."